Container Security

Container security is a set of security measures that are used to protect containers and the data they contain. At a high level, following tasks can ensure security of your container cluster:

• Access control: Controlling who has access to containers and their data
• Encryption: Encrypting data at rest and in transit to protect it from unauthorized access
• Vulnerability scanning: Scanning containers for known vulnerabilities, securing the container image against vulnerabilities
• Patching: Patching vulnerabilities as soon as they are discovered
• Network policies: network security within the container cluster
• Implementing static (only verified images should make it to the registry) and deploy time (no unauthorized image pulls) provenance controls
• Hardening the container cluster for best practices configurations
• Monitoring, logging, alerting container clusters, monitoring containers for suspicious activity
• Compliance: visibility into compliance and standards (e.g. CIS benchmarks for Kubernetes)
• Incident response: Having a plan in place to respond to security incidents

When choosing a security partner for your container workloads, it is important to ensure that they provide the following:

• Static build time security: This includes scanning your container images for vulnerabilities before they are deployed.
• Deploy time security: This includes ensuring that your containers are only deployed to secure environments and that they are not tampered with during deployment.
• Runtime security: This includes monitoring your containers for suspicious activity and taking action to mitigate threats.

You should also consider the security of the cluster (K8s components) and the Kubernetes nodes. The cluster should be configured securely and the nodes should be protected from attack.

It is generally recommended to use native controls, so a partner solution that works with native controls and provides additional capabilities to secure your application is the best fit.

Compliance is also a big part of the equation, so a partner solution that provides visibility into compliance and standards (e.g. CIS benchmarks for Kubernetes) should be preferred.

By following these guidelines, you can ensure that you choose a security partner that can help you protect your container workloads from attack.

Container security is important because containers are often used to store sensitive data, such as customer information or intellectual property. If a container is compromised, the data it contains could be accessed by unauthorized individuals.

There are a number of tools and technologies that can be used to improve container security. Some of these include:

• Container security scanners: These tools scan containers for known vulnerabilities.
• Container security orchestration tools: These tools help to automate the process of securing containers.
• Container security best practices: These are guidelines that can be followed to improve the security of containers.

By following these best practices, organizations can help to protect their containers and the data they contain from unauthorized access.